Learn Ruby on Rails in a Girls-Only Boot Camp

“It was a good opportunity to get more into a Ruby on Rails,” says Karen Keasler. “Ruby is a pretty easy- to- read language – it’s more like reading sentences and can be a lot less intimidating. I think it’s a great opportunity for women to get in and see that coding is hard, but not impossible.”

By Rachel Lehmann-Haupt (Editor, Women 2.0)

Code Fellows, a Seattle-based coding boot camp that guarantees a $60,000 tech job after graduation, has announced the launch of a women-only Ruby on Rails Boot camp in an effort to address the widening gender gap in the coding trade. The new boot camp will start in early July.

Boot camps are popping up in major tech centers around the country – including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Toronto, Washington and Cambridge, MA. They are a great opportunity to jumpstart a career in programming without spending years going back to school. Most boot camps offer intensive two or three month programs that more than likely will pay off the hefty enrollment fee with a good job and healthy salary.

Now the trend has migrated to the Northwest, where Women 2.0 also just launched a Founder Friday event. The women-only boot camp from Code Fellows was born from a conversation between Andy Sack, the Chairman of Code Fellows, and Jennifer Chynoweth, Recruiting Evangelist at WhitePages, Inc. Jennifer was mentioning to Andy that it’s extremely difficult to find female software engineers in Seattle – even despite their best recruiting efforts.

While many women are participating in coed boot camps,Will Little, the Managing Director of Code Fellows, felt that it was important to have a class where women could have more focused access (compared to co-ed classes) to grow their network of other female engineers – and be mentored by experienced women in the industry.

Karen Keasler, 30, is currently working part-time analyzing web content, but her goal is to get into coding. She recently took the two-day Rails Girls boot camp, and then a longer intensive course. “It was a good opportunity to get a more into a Ruby on Rails,” she says. “Ruby is a pretty easy- to- read language – it’s read more like sentences and can be a lot less intimidating. I think it’s a great opportunity for women to get in and see that coding is hard, but not impossible. It’s all about problem solving and a super interesting way to earn money.”

Women 2.0 readers: Are you a girl coder or founder in Seattle? We want to hear your story!

Rachel Lehmann-Haupt (rachel@women2.org) is an editor at Women 2.0. She also works with companies on the art of storytelling. This includes content strategy – blogs, web articles, contextual commerce, e-books and e-magazines – with the goal of better influencing and engaging audiences. She was a founding editor of TED Books and has published and edited numerous articles and books. Her interests include gender politics, working motherhood, urban innovation, health, and fashion. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Daily Beast, New York, Vogue, Self, Outside, and Wired. Follow her on Twitter at @rlehmannhaupt.